Tom Keen, of Tor View Avenue, Newton Abbot, writes:

I live in a part of Newton Abbot that in common with most other local areas has evident needs for, among other things, improved litter clearance, more policing, better recreational and social facilities, roadside maintenance and street repairs. Buckland is represented by no fewer than six councillors on either town or district councils, so it should have a good chance of seeing some improvements.

But, as we all know, there is no money available to invest in any of these services because all our money has already been purloined in taxes used to pay politicians, subsidise bankers' bonuses and service the interest on government debt.

With six councillors, what are all these worthies doing, if it's not spending our money on our behalf providing obviously needed improvements to local residential neighbourhoods?

Perhaps they are all busily debating the next big mega-bucks expenditure on unpopular bypasses, or hatching yet another visionary scheme to revamp renovation-weary town centres when most electors would prefer their money to be spent on admittedly less glamorous and more prosaic local projects like extra litter-bins, and repairing run-down roads.

Expensive vanity projects presumably help the councillors to feel worthwhile. Otherwise, they might have to turn their meetings into support groups to console each other for their lack of resources, and inability to get anything done for their electors in these crookedly straitened times.

Still at least those elected have the authority of local democracy to support them in their time of ineffectiveness. We also have cavalcades of local authority officers, managers and administrators who must now exist to manage the tricky task of not providing services. When determined councillors do try to get anything done, it seems they are frequently thwarted by arbitrary vetoes exercised by council officers, who derive their authority from no democratic process at all. One example will suffice to illustrate this iniquitous state of affairs.

Here's one so-called neighbourhood officer's response to a plea by a councillor for road repairs:

'The roads are deteriorating and the concrete surface below the thin surfacing is causing cracking which has also peeled off in certain localised areas. However, as the thickness of the thin surfacing is not deep enough to cause a safety defect our only maintenance shall be through our planned annual works. These works are now organised by our Asset Management team; my understanding is that sites shall be chosen through a county-wide review of survey and defect data. I can therefore foresee that these sites shall not be of high priority, if selected at all, as the survey data is unlikely to raise any issues and number of defects raised and repaired shall be zero.'

Why should we continue to pay so many people to tell us why important services we also pay for will not get done?

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